The Unicorn
by pansybud
Summary: another installment in my series of trashy self-indulgent fantasy/fairytale/tf2 crossovers, pyrocentric as usual, rated for forthcoming upsetting content
1. Chapter 1

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood and she lived all alone.

A matriarch of animals, a drop of the mercurial moonstuff, an earthly vehicle of the satisfied gasp of summer, she was ancient, wild and wonderfully beautiful - the careless color of seafoam, her feet which she tread upon like light on a riverbed were extremely small, her neck very narrow and very long, rather like a swans - above her eyes, which were enormous and utterly black, grew a horn which shone and shivered with its own seashell light.

In the wood she possessed it was always spring, for as a bud of fire in a lantern pours out light unicorns bestow a little of their immortality upon every place they pass. The animals of the land were tamed by her, playing peacefully together beneath her feet - the water here was sweeter, the soil better, the wind warmer, the grasses good and fruit plentiful and bright as rubies shining in the trees, but it had been a long while - the unicorn, in her sweet dream of eternal time, could not quite know how long - since the last human virgin sought her counsel. It had in fact been so long the word for unicorn with which she was acquainted could be recalled no longer by any living person - the misses she once met were no longer remembered, their lineages existing only perhaps in withering slips of parchment somewhere in the world.

The unicorn rarely had cause to reflect on the inelegant and noisy human animal, but gradually, gradually, as centuries slipped past her, she began to believe she had perhaps only imagined them, after all - those girlets which walked barefoot by her, which dressed her in daisies and young roses and lay their young yielding cheeks on her side, each of which she had valued very well in her inscrutable way - and so it was droll to her indeed when, one day, it happened that two men with long bows rode into her forest, and she found it good to walk with them, out of sight in the thick shush of the thicket, to hear their odd hard sounds.

"I mislike the feel of this forest," grumbled the elder of the two hunters, a long, crooked man with an ugly face and cunning hands, who wore a wide hat, and drew his horse gently to pause.

"Why?" begged the younger, who was very young, indeed, small and shivering with energy, and as his companion initially offered no reply, he scoffed, "are you afraid?"

"Only fools have no fear," admonished the elder, looking pointedly at his charge, who withered only a little.

"What of?," the younger persisted, and his horse like himself was shuffling restlessly where it stood, and into the contemplative silence which responded he teased, "what monsters do you imagine exist any more? What is it you fear here, superstitious old man? Demons? Dragons?"

"More dangerous," said the elder, "the most beautiful creature that exists."

"Do nymphs live in these woods?" said the surprised youth, now looking about eagerly, and the senior hunter almost smiled.

"No nymphs, but a sentinel which stood by them at the dawn of the world. There is no game for us here."

He drew his horse up at the throat and she turned, and the wide-eyed youth followed uneagerly, and as they departed together through the path of shattered reeds the hunter spoke so low beneath the sound of the youths cacophonous complaints and chatter only the unicorn, flowing through the wood unseen at his side, could interpret his words:

"This is no world for you any longer, poor beast. Good luck to you."


	2. Chapter 2

a/n: thank u all for your concern but no, i def did not post this to the tf2 category by accident, it is pyro fanfiction lol

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><p>Looking at her face in the moonlit pool, her face which wore pale eternity like fine women wear diamonds, her face of dignity as subtle and essential as the carousel of seasons, her face the very sun loved, the unicorn spoke the first words she had spoken since a previous empire; the sound of them alarmed her to leap in the water and shatter her image, and they were, "I am the last unicorn there is."<p>

She wandered up the silver ribbon of river in a fugue through the prism within which immortals see suspended the world - she wandered through the secret hours the soil slept and the stars simmered, she wandered all night to the boundary of her wood eventually into the meadow asylum in which, aeons ago, she had been born, and there in the sea-green dark of early morning resting on a throne of tall sunflower, almost asleep, a butterfly she did not know awaited her.

"Hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye," he greeted her, and she drew closer; she saw he was robust, a comely brown, a widely smiling jovial soul with the queer cadence of speech the unicorn could not recognize as a highlands brogue, and all he spake were snippets of song which had once affected him. He had only one eye. He bowed reverently to the unicorn, and said again, "I don't know why you say good-bye, I say hello."

The unicorn nodded, gravely, for she felt still disturbed, and listened to the butterfly serenaded her, "for I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night."

"To whom are you reciting?," wondered she, her sound like a white witchs broth of moonbeams and milk, and the butterfly murmured mirth, pitching hither and thither as though drunk. "Do you speak to me in this brazen way?"

"Dance and be merry, it's only a dime!," the butterfly sang.

"Why, do you know who I am?"

"You are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire..."

"Silly creature!" condemned the unicorn, exasperated and overextended - shy though not humble, she felt the song of her should occur in her, not dripping from her teeth to curdle in the air - "which affronts me when I am so sad..."

"Whenceforth and whither -"

" - it isn't your concern," she admonished, "but I am wandering."

" - and why?"

"I wander because I wonder - I wonder if there is anyone left like me."

"Has anyone here seen Kelly?"

"It serves me right for speaking to you," said the unicorn, "I should be ashamed of myself to entertain such a nuisance - such a little fool - I should be ashamed to go so far from the place I know."

The butterfly lit upon her long snout, and she blinked at it - his audacity impressed her, and she permitted him to stroke her nose, telling her soothingly, "All good to me is lost. Evil, be thou my good."

"Well... I suppose you mean no harm." Though older than animals, she was, in fact, young for a unicorn, and the soil of her heart was yet too loose to support the roots of spite - and the spray of the butterflys wings was so handsome, so good to look up at mutely shimmering in the new green light from where she was drowning in her face in the pool. "I forgive you."

She walked with him through the meadow clover and wildflower, to the crest of the tranquil scarlet sea of the sunrise, she stood stolid though she rioted in her heart.

"Butterfly," she began, quietly, feeling silly, "I wonder..."

"I wonder why each little bird has a someone ..."

"... in your travels, have you ever seen anyone like me?"

For the first time, the butterfly did not reply. He fluttered about her and seemed to dream.

"Listen," he said - so she did - "You can find your people if you are brave. They passed down all the roads long ago, and the bull ran close behind them."

"The bull? What is the bull?"

"His horns are the horns of a wild ox. With them he shall push the peoples, all of them, to the ends of the earth. Listen, listen, listen quickly!"

"I am listening," the unicorn cried. "Where are my people, and what is the bull?"

The feints of the butterflies flight were deeper and slower, now, his voice somewhat softer, and he told her, "I have nightmares about crawling around on the ground."

So she left him at the meadow end, in the lips of a pink tulip where, shortly thereafter, and silently, he expired; meanwhile, the unicorn dithered a long time at the start of the road - for unicorns are not intended to make choices.


End file.
